The unsettling 84-second clip has divided opinions, with some amused by the smiling child actors and fake explosions; others appalled by evidence that suicide bombers have become playground heroes of sorts.

“It’s horrifying and alarming. These children have become fascinated by bombers rather than condemning them,” said Salma Jafar of Save the Children UK in Pakistan.

“If they glamorise violence now, they can become part of it later in life.”

I’m not convinced this should be all that surprising or upsetting. I can remember pretending to be all sorts of things as a child, some of which would could be considered disturbing. Cops and Robbers requires someone to be the robbers and it’s just not a chase unless you’re shooting guns at each other or attempting to run each other over. Cowboys and Indians isn’t as much fun unless you collect a few scalps along the way. Can’t fight WWII without someone playing the part of the Nazis. Oh, and whoever got to be the Evil Aliens got to make people’s heads explode (that was my favorite).

Despite all of that glorification of violence, I somehow managed to grow up and not be a head scalpin’ evil Nazi alien bank robber who caused people’s heads to explode while trying to shoot them in a car chase. But, I hear you say, this is different! This is something that really happens! Yeah, so did scalpings, and Nazis, and bank robbers. Though that’s true enough about the aliens… as far as we know.

My point is that a lot of child play contains sinister undertones and has throughout history. Hell, there are a number of classic games kids play to this day that have histories most folks would find unsettling if they knew about them. Most folks will instantly think of Ring Around the Rosies as an example as it’s common knowledge that it’s about the Black Plague. Reality is that it’s not about the Plague, but a lot of people think it is. But what I’m saying is that most of us manage to grow up relatively unmarred from pretending to be the bad guys.

There’s also the fact that this video is obviously being filmed by an adult. That calls into question whether or not the children are pretending to be suicide bombers out of admiration or just because an adult was instructing them to do so. Given how much attention is being aimed at the camera man I’m less inclined to think this was a spontaneous moment caught on film than I am that the whole thing was staged by adults probably to freak people out. Though if the kids are being indoctrinated then that would be something to be worried about. If it’s just something they decided to do on their own then it’s probably harmless.

And I haven’t a clue as to why as they don’t appear to be using them for a damned thing. There’s at least two IP address ranges that they keep showing up under, the latest was from 116.71.57.96 which shows up as part of PTCL Triple Play Project which belongs to the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited which is apparently a major broadband provider in Pakistan. I suspect that these are fakes because A) the names being registered are definitely not Pakistani, B) the email address is always for a Yahoo! mail account and C) after registering they don’t appear to ever visit the site again.

What I can’t figure out is the point of this activity. They’re not putting spam links in the account profiles, they’re not using them to try and submit entries to the blog, and there’s no facility in WordPress to use an account as an email relay. They just register account after account sometimes within mere minutes of each other and all the IP addresses trace back to Pakistan. It’s like there’s some weird contest over there to see who can amass the most SEB accounts or something.

I’ve taken to deleting them when I notice them piling up and, so far, no one has dropped me an email to ask why the fuck I deleted their account. So I’m stumped. Anyone else running WordPress notice this happening at their site?

Chalk another one up for that tried-and-true combination of religious fundamentalism and unchecked male aggression. Five Pakistani women, three of them teenagers, were shot and buried alive in rural Pakistan over the unspeakable horror of wanting to choose their own husbands. Naturally, it was relatives that kidnapped and killed them, but when they were arrested, the local Congress-imam said he’d be happy to defend them as shining examples of centuries of religious tradition.

Old story, new level of revulsion. Honor your sisters, gentlemen, with a moment of silence, then find someplace to speak up over it.